This Week – 02/06/2024
Hello welcome to This Week, are Red Bull now under threat as the Ferrari-McLaren battle closes in on them. several teams are looking to close the gap as the season moves into one of the most intense periods seven races in nine weeks before the summer break and it not looking as easy as it did a month ago for Red Bull.
Red Bull
CEO and team principal Christian Horner says that the team could use sister RB team to help find answers to why they suffer so much on bumps and kerbs. Last week in Monaco was another street circuit where both Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez found it difficult to extract pace from the car.
Their car behaved like it was on a knife-edge at times, and it was not comfortable over the bumps and kerbs that are key to performance around the Monte Carlo lap. The team was left further confused by the fact that the softer it ran the car to theoretically improve its ride, the worse it actually performed.
I think that they could be in a situation like we saw midway through the period of dominance that Mercedes had, where that early dominance was enough to mask issues at places like Monaco. Max Verstappen has suggested that they have had this issue for a while.
Naturally, they want to resolve this problem with the current theory being, that they don’t have enough of an operating window to cope with low speeds and bumps without it compromising the car’s ride height and ultimate downforce.
Red Bull’s plan to get itself back to the front, Horner said: “Quite a lot of focus will now take part on why have we had these ride issues? Why is the car struggling on the kerbs? The RB car is running with our suspension from last year and didn’t seem to have the same issues. So we need to understand if it’s something that we’ve introduced.”
Mercedes
Mercedes CEO and team principal Toto Wolff says Lewis Hamilton has every right to be sceptical about potential preferential treatment but insists both he and George Russell are handled equally. Hamilton suggested last weekend that he would be unable to ever outqualify Russell again this season, and was at pains to point out his team-mate had had exclusive use of a new front wing for Monte Carlo.
It later emerged that Hamilton had turned down the wing because he did not want to risk a pitlane start if it was damaged in qualifying, the seven-time champion’s comments about Russell holding the advantage hinted at some concern about things not being totally even between them.
Wolff said that the team has only once intervened in a battle between its drivers which was in Abu Dhabi 2016. Hamilton was leading that race and tried to back teammate Nico Rosberg into the pack to give them the chance to overtake and push him off the podium.
Asked if Hamilton’s comments about Russell were a sign that there was some paranoia that he was not getting equal treatment because he was leaving at the end of the year, Wolff said: “Aren’t all drivers a bit sceptical at times? I think as a team we have demonstrated even in the most tense competitions between teammates that we are trying to always balance it right, and be transparent and fair.”
“I think there was not a moment, apart from the 2016 Abu Dhabi GP, where we tried to manage a race, and we haven’t done since then.” He added the team were on a mission to give both drivers the best possible cars and best possible strategies.
Hamilton’s relationship with the team was put in the spotlight throughout the Monaco weekend, as there were a number of other moments when he questioned what the team had done.
Ferrari
Team principal Fred Vasseur reckons that “nothing changes” in his team’s approach to beat Red Bull despite winning the Monaco Grand Prix. Max Verstappen and Red Bull struggled over the bumps in Monte Carlo and finished sixth, with Charles Leclerc winning the race.
Vasseur acknowledged that the field had compressed in 2024 and that the three teams who had won races so far this season could all contend for further victories depending on the layout of each upcoming circuit. But said the team needed to maintain its progress and said the “worst-case scenario” for Ferrari to believe that its job was already done.
Vasseur explained, “It’s not a matter of motivation because the motivation is there for a while, but it’s self-confidence for the drivers, for the team. And for sure, as soon as you are in a position to win you pay more attention to details, you have a kind of snowball effect.”
“This is part of the improvement of the last six or seven months. We have to continue like this, but the worst-case scenario would be to imagine that it’s done, that it will be like this until the end.” He says he is convinced that it would be up and down between Ferrari and McLaren all season.
I think that Ferrari is trying to be realistic but not rule anything out, they and I agree that Mercedes are not that far away in that fight. But they all need to be opportunistic, which they admit.
McLaren
Lando Norris says it felt “frustrating and unfair” that Carlos Sainz got his original grid slot back for the Monaco restart because of the red flag rules. In the second incident at start, Sainz had picked up a puncture at the first corner before skidding to a halt and appeared to be out of the race at Casino Square. the pile-up involving Red Bull’s Sergio Perez and the two Haas cars brought out a red flag a few moments later, and served to give Sainz a lifeline.
According to F1’s sporting regulations, the order for the restart “will be taken at the last point at which it was possible to determine the position of all cars. All such cars will then be permitted to resume the sprint session or the race.”
The reason the race had to restart from the original restart, minus the crashed cars, order was simply because the Sauber of Guanyu Zhou hadn’t crossed the sector one/two line before the red flag meaning the order hadn’t been established. The regulations state ‘race will be restarted from the last point where an order was established,’ in this case the starting grid.
Norris was not alone in thinking that the situation seemed hard to understand. Mercedes’ George Russell said: “It’s not correct. I don’t know what the ruling is exactly. But yeah, that was a bit strange.”
McLaren boss Andrea Stella was more considerate about things, as he accepted that the rules were implemented in the right manner – but he acknowledged how lucky Sainz had been.
he said after the race, “In terms of the way in which the restart order was determined, I think what the FIA did was the best thing to do. Also, it is in agreement with the precedent, whereby you use the safety car line two when sector times are not available. I don’t think using the mini sectors is a good way of doing that.”
McLaren says it is chasing answers as to why its upgraded car is delivering more than it anticipated, especially at slow speeds. The upgrade in Miami allowed Norris to take his maiden win followed by second at Imola with teammate Oscar Piastri also finishing second in Monaco.
The team is happy to be fighting for wins but is also puzzled as to why the gains that the changes have delivered are greater than it anticipated. All teams would I think like to have upgrades which have over delivered than under, but the issue with not understanding is that could make it harder to optimise the upgrades.
Stella says getting to the bottom of that situation is critical to help the squad better understand how it should address further car development.
Alpine
Pierre Gasly has urged Alpine team-mate Esteban Ocon to “make a change” following their collision on the first lap in Monaco. That collision prevented the team from converting one of their better qualifying’s at a circuit which is more difficult to overtake.
The incident resulted in Ocon was launched into the air and had to retire due to the resulting suspension and gearbox damage when his car landed heavily on the ground. Meanwhile, Gasly was able to keep racing despite a punctured hard tyre, with the red flag coming in handy to get new medium rubber he had to nurse to the finish. He scored his first point of the season in a very uneventful race.
Relieved to end his points drought in a context where “a point or two might be crucial at the end of the year”, Gasly admitted he “was quite shocked” by the contact with his compatriot.
He added, “It was very unnecessary; you should never have such a situation, especially between teammates. Just sad. Disappointed with the situation. Especially, we had clear instructions before the race on what to do, and whoever qualified ahead, the trailing car was supposed to help throughout the race.
Gasly insisted that Ocon jeopardised what could have been an even better result for Alpine: “At that time, we’re P9 and P10, so there’s absolutely no reason to risk to get both cars out. We came a couple of centimetres from having both cars in the wall.”
Ocon took to X, formerly Twitter, to take responsibility of the incident, which the stewards gave him a five-place grid penalty for ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix. he wrote during the race, “Today’s incident was my fault, the gap was too small in the end and I apologise to the team on this one. Hoping for a deserved points-finish for the team today.”
This week the latest casualty of the turmoil was operations director Rob White who was sacked on Friday, he has been with the team through its various names for two decades. White has been the director of operations at their Enstone factory since 2016.
White is a widely respected engineer who joined Renault in 2004 as deputy managing director of engines at their F1 facility at Viry-Chatillon in Paris. He had previously been head of F1 engine operations at UK motorsport engine builder Cosworth.
An Alpine spokesperson said: “As part of the team’s wider operational restructure, we can confirm the departure of Rob White. The team is thankful for Rob’s efforts during his long career both at Enstone and at Viry-Chatillon, where he led the championship-winning engine project in 2005 and 2006. We wish him the best in his future endeavours.”
RB
Daniel Ricciardo says his focus is on improving his current performances “week in, week out”, rather than securing a contract extension with RB. The Australian has had a difficult opening third of the season his only points coming in the Miami Sprint.
This leaves him fourteen points short of RB team-mate Yuki Tsunoda, who has impressed thus far in his fourth season with the team, and this has led to suggestions that Ricciardo might be at risk of losing his seat to reserve Liam Lawson.
CEO Peter Bayer says the team are happy with his current line-up, but Ricciardo refuted suggestions that he was seeking assurance about his future. Ricciardo said “I mean I’ll be honest, I haven’t really given [contract talks] too much. That’s great to hear [from Bayer] and yes, that would be awesome, but I want to be doing better consistently.”
“The gap [to Tsunoda], maybe we do find something that [explains] that’s why I lost a bit here or there. There’ll probably always be something. This is F1 and it’s never perfect. I’m not happy with having these gaps. I think that’s what’s frustrating me a bit. Obviously the team has been great and they’ve been really supportive and obviously they know I can do it.”
Ricciardo finished twelfth in Monaco, where he started, but admits his struggles are frustrating. I feel the idea of bringing him back into RB hasn’t paid off because we still haven’t seen the old Ricciardo and there is not many answers to why he isn’t performing.